Critic Reviews

I don’t﻿ regret the time I spent with All Zombies Must Die, but there isn’t enough about the game that sets it apart from the myriad other titles like it on the digital marketplace. If you’re looking for some decent Zombies Ate My Neighbors-style couch co-op action, you can do a lot worse for your $10. If you want a game that innovates on the twin-stick shooter genre in a meaningful way, however, I wouldn’t look here.

At its core, All Zombies Must Die is a solid shooter with RPG elements and a decent level of character upgrading. Unfortunately, it's let down a little by the monotonous missions of 'kill that' or 'collect this'. Rachel isn't a particularly likable either - of course, you don't have to use her at all!

Simple RPG-style leveling lets you customize your characters a bit, but the crafting system that augments weapons is more fun. Don’t expect much experimentation: If mixing an assault rifle with a megaphone adds sonic damage, you can be sure that mouthpiece does the same for every other weapon as well. Still, there’s much to be said for electrified pistols and radioactive swords, even if the slaughter gets repetitive well before the final battle.

All Zombies Must Die!, no relation to All Orcs Must Die!, straddles the boundary between cartoony fun and crazy, over-the-top fun. It feels like it tries to enter wild territory with its alien protagonist, crazy weapon combinations, and sentient-robot-doors, but it never quite goes all the way. I like the personality of the game, but it could've dived futher into its wacky roots. Instead, everything is a little forgettable. The characters, locations, and story aren't anything to write home about, and that's unfortunate. It might not reinvigorate the tired zombie arcade game formula, or push any boundaries, but it knows what it is. Think of it as Dead Island's simplified arcade cousin, but with a very different look to it. If that sounds like your thing, All Zombies Must Die! isn't likely to disappoint.

All Zombies Must Die may sound like a senseless action game, but it turns out to be a moderately deep role-playing game. Part dual-stick shooter and part dungeon crawler, Doublesix's newest zombie game has a lot going for it. Unfortunately it's marred by repetitive gameplay, too many fetch quests, lame jokes and horrendous collision detection!

It generally goes without saying that most games are more entertaining with friends. Sadly, I found all the robust RPG, questing, and crafting experiences in All Zombie Must Die better suited for my single-player excursions. Now this isn't to say that I had more fun going it solo, it'd just that with the many layers and length of the overall game, seeing this game to its completion with a four couch-camping companions may be a tad unobtainable. There is a lot to love with All Zombies Must Die, from its more humorous writing to its charming visuals, but ultimately the game fails to deliver the in-depth multiplayer experience it set out to. There's a solid experience to be had from start to finish, but unless you've been in a coma, or underneath a rock for the last few years, you've probably already played this game.

With the exception of a few controller-hurling quests, I enjoyed my time with All Zombies Must Die, but that doesn't mean I can let it pass for being such a shallow experience. Once you've taken your first quest from a gatekeeper and moved to the next area, you know what to expect for the rest of the game. That's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not the most exciting.

For 800 MS points All Zombies Must Die does provide some entertainment, however with the absence of online co-op play, lackluster graphics and sound, this is a game that will become very boring very quickly. With other great titles on the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS points that offer a lot more enjoyment and online play with others, All Zombies Must Die is a perfect example of how something that could have been very good gets turned into something very generic and boring. Should you spend your 800 MS points on this game? If you like wasting your points then by all means download away.

All Zombies Must Die is an ambitious entry in the top-down, dual-stick shooter genre, and most of its ideas are successful. Giving you activities to partake in outside of combat does a good job of keeping you engaged, and even the story adds to the enjoyment. But the combat is so flawed that it saps much of that goodwill. Getting overwhelmed by a crowd of zombies (with little chance to escape) is an all-too-common cause of death, and the relentless backtracking makes progress a tiresome slog. All Zombies Must Die has a lot of potential, but poor design choices ultimately hold back its bold ambition.

Some of these problems are mitigated by playing with friends, four-player co-op enabling all characters to be present and taking the sting out of individual deaths, but in time the constant grind will still take its toll. Like any good zombie fiction, the real enemy in AZMD! isn't the walking dead, but the humans who created them.

All Zombies Must Die takes a timeworn premise that should be fun and cathartic and seemingly goes out of its way to make it repetitive, fiddly and annoying. If you have a trio of friends close to hand, the co-op aspect might just be enough to rescue it from the depths of mediocrity, but if you're planning on playing solo you'd be far better served by trying one of the dozens of other zombie blasters on the market.

Taking into account that All Zombies Must Die! will set you back only about £8, it’s not a terrible purchase. But it isn’t one that is easy to recommend, even at that price. If you’re desperate for something to play while you wait for new post-Christmas content to hit for real then give it a shot. There’s nothing all that wrong here, there’s just nothing all that right either.

All Zombies Must Die is a $10 downloadable game that fails to reach the bar it sets by its own absurdity. After a few hours you’re killing zombies with flaming shotguns and chainsaws and its pure craziness. But, the humor in the game from the characters never reaches that same level of craziness. Instead it feels like the characters are trying too hard to make you laugh. The dialogue becomes that awkward co-worker who makes jokes no one laughs at even though they know it would be funny out of someone else’s mouth. It’s a real shame too, because a top down RPG with zombies and insanity could be totally awesome. Overall though AZMD misses its mark too many times and creates a stagnant game that is just like the enemies that populate the world; brainless fodder that is only mildly funny a small percentage of the time.